Dating news review: week ended 14 sept 2012:

The Battle of the Sexes is nothing new, but this time it’s taken a new tack when it comes to how men and women get along, according to a panel recently organised by the Evening Standard. In news that could certainly shake up the status quo, one journalist said that when the relationship is reversed, there’s not a stronger man behind a strong woman in the limeight, but a ‘beta’ man behind every ‘alpha’ woman.

So apparently we’re all just a bloody pack of wolves now when it comes to men and women living together. Does it have to be a relationship that means one person has to put themselves in a domineering position over the other, or can you actually date someone and have a relationship rooted in equality instead of conflict?

Whether you’ve been just dating for a few weeks or if you’ve been together for years and years, the best relationships tend to be when there’s more equality than there isn’t. It shouldn’t be about which one’s the alpha wolf or the beta wolf, as we’re not animals – well, we are but we go about wearing clothes and we’ve given up on the whole ‘walking on all fours’ bit, and if you’re in a relationship that you feel may be relegating you to a second fiddle position, you need to go and take steps to resolve that.

However, if you live in Bideford you may be out of luck if you’re looking for relationship counseling, as a charity in the area is scrambling to find a new home. Formerly operating out of Bideford’s TTS House, relationship charity Relate can no longer offer relationship counseling once a week on Wednesdays for three hours at a time after the building closed.

Relate representative, Veronica Beckett, said that long-time users of the service have had to travel to Barnstaple for now in order to continue their counseling for now until Relate finds a new location. The charity is in urgent need of a new site in Bideford in order to prevent people from having to travel, and as they only had two days’ notice before the building was shuttered, they were caught out and are hoping against hope to find someone willing to provide a free private room with attached waiting facilities.